Paranormal researcher to unveil where ghosts lurk in libraries at Scranton Library in Madison

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MADISON >> Public libraries are a haven for ghost stories, with so many people going in and out over the years there are bound to be ghosts lurking in the nooks and crannies, said paranormal researcher Jeff Belanger.

“Libraries are very transient places,” said Belanger. “Even if nobody dies there, there were many a person who was probably more comfortable at the library than they were at their home.

“People who would escape from a bad home life and just sit at the library for hours and hours and read books and escape into those books and in that building. Why wouldn’t they haunt the place where they were most comfortable?”

That’s what makes Belanger’s upcoming visit to the E.C. Scranton Memorial Library so exciting. Will he hear about paranormal activity in this building that dates back to the early 1900s?

“They’re there if they tell me they’re there,” said Belanger, in a phone interview from his Massachusetts home. “I have no magic powers. I can’t read your mind, I don’t know the future, so if the librarians tell me it’s haunted, then I’ll let them tell me the stories.”

Belanger will offer a multimedia lecture, including images, audio clips, and video from some of the world’s most infamous haunts at “A Supernatural Evening with Jeff Belanger,” 7 p.m., Thursday, Jan., 26 at the Scranton Library, 801 Boston Post Road Madison. This event is free, but registration is preferred by going to the website or by calling 203-245-7365.

For more than 20 years Belanger has been a paranormal researcher, investigator, and is the author of more than a dozen books on the paranormal that have been published in six languages.

He’s also the Emmy-nominated host, writer, and producer of New England Legends on PBS and the series writer/researcher for the Ghost Adventures show on the Travel Channel, which is now in its ninth season.

“I’ll be talking about a lot of New England haunts and legends, some global ones and just offering an interesting perspective on the folklore, the history and some of the strange evidence and experiences people have gone through from all over the world,” said Belanger.

Andy Northrup, Scranton Library adult services/programming librarian, said he hasn’t heard any spooky tales from library employees, but he concurs with Belanger that Scranton Library could have some stories to tell.

“If there was ever a place I would believe it, especially an old historical building like this one, I mean this building’s over 100 year old now,” said Northrup. “I haven’t heard any stories myself, but, who knows.”

Belanger has interviewed thousands of people over the course of his career and said his work is really connecting to the past.

“These little subtle experiences that add and connect us to this kind of global phenomenon that we would call something fringe, but I think, to me, a ghost is really just a connection to our past,” he said.

“However you want to define ghost, whether you want to call it like a literal discarnate spirit or a place memory or just a story, and whatever it is, it connects us with our past and it brings it to the present,” Belanger explained. “That’s why I think these stories are so important.”

Belanger believes that the fear and trepidation associated with the supernatural actually helps one to connect with the past.

“That little bit of fear, I think,” he said, “does open us to stuff that’s probably around us all the time, you just don’t think about it when you’re in the fast food restaurant, but you do think about it in the old, scary abandoned building, which has been the setting for every horror movie you’ve ever seen.”

He said he finds every single facet of the supernatural fascinating.

“The history of the building, the history of the location, the people that go looking for it, the experience itself, what may be there, what may not be there, the physics, the science, the beliefs, the sociology, the psychology of the whole thing. It’s what makes it one of the most interesting topics on Earth.

“It’s strange that I feel the most alive when I’m looking for dead people.”